Spies Seeing Double

"MY CHOSEN CAREER is a psychological tightrope walk over a pit of fire," says a CIA spook code-named Martian (played with steely intensity by Michael Fassbender) in the solemn spy drama The Agency.

Nearly as tormented about living a life that's a lie is Helen Webb (a spirited Keira Knightley), the duplicitous heroine of the rollicking espionage romp Black Doves.

Helen works for a shadowy group that steals government secrets and sells to the highest bidder. "I have no idea who I am," she laments to her best friend, Sam (the soulful Ben Whishaw), a forlorn assassin who's spent the last seven years in exile.

Obviously, theirs are not normal lives. And while both series take great pains to reveal the emotional and mental toll the spy game inflicts on those who choose to live with false identities for years on end, they go about it quite differently.